del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that lets you bookmark your favorite articles and web pages using tags and bundles. Because your links, tags, and bundles are saved online, you can access them from any computer. Then you can network with other people to share your bookmarks and see their bookmarks.

Visit del.icio.us

Resource Links

Blogger discusses using del.icio.us in the classroom.
Del.icio.us in the Classroom
Firefox Extension (Allows you to view del.icio.us bookmarks in your sidebar)
Other Social Bookmarking Tools - Comparison
Del.icio.us Podcast by David Warlick
Del.icio.us - A Can of Worms?
del.icio.us & feeburner email - Tech Integration Synergy
Wisdom of Crowds by Robin Good
Del.icio.us Tutorial by Janetta Garton

Watch Social Bookmarking in Plain English

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SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths:

No cost to open an account.
No matter where you go, you can access all of your bookmarks.
Allows you to categorize bookmarks by multiple tags.
Can import current bookmarks from Safari / Internet Explorer.
Can choose to make bookmarks public or private.
It is an easy way to share and record information since you can bookmark sites with links to other sites.
Able to network with other users to share bookmarks and notes.
Able to bundle tags so searching for sites is easier and more efficient.
Easy to rename and delete tags.
Networking does not have to be reciprocal.
Able to search within tags.
Can organize and remember bookmarks more flexible than folders.

Weaknesses:

When saving bookmarks, numbers such as 5.1, 5.12 are not listed in numerical order.
Controlling your tags can be overwhelming so keep it usable for yourself.
It may take a long time to import your bookmarks.
Allows both capital and lower case tags, making it more likely to create redundant tags.
Sign up for students is cumbersome. They must create a yahoo id which will give students a yahoo email.
Delicious will not create student accounts to bypass the yahoo id issue.

Opportunities:

Brings all of your bookmarks together in one place. Collect them using tags that put them in similar categories together.
Ability to network with people around the globe to share information.
Encourages you to revisit and organize ALL your existing bookmarks, maybe even delete a few.
You can take advantage of someone else's research thus reducing time spent looking for information/related websites.
Easily gauge a site's popularity by viewing the number of users who have linked to it.
You can collaborate with class or group using a shared account, special tag or networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant & useful for your class or group.
I set up safe sites that I allow my students to use when they have finished classwork, sites that I want them to practice with for Math, for example.

Threats:

Some tags may not be appropriate.
Sharing personal sites on the internet might not be encouraged.
This is a new tool and not familiar - may take a while to get comfortable using it.

IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM

Create a list of student-safe links that your students can use for a specific research project.
Teachers can share links with their students and other teachers.
Families can create and share bookmarks to plan trips or to save all the websites that they use to pay bills.
Students can share their favorite websites and this saves valuable time when doing a unit, collaborative projects, term papers, etc., retrieve them from any computer and easily site them.
Put this on your Shorecrest webpage so that parents and students who visit can link to resources.
Create an individual tag for each class and sites and resources they might need through out the year (ex. eng101-lksw)
Create a tag specifically for your parents to pass on resources they might be interested in (ex. Mrs.W-parents)
Lesson plan for introducing del.icio.us in the classroom
Run a feed of your class tagged sites on your class blog or wiki for students to share sites for a project

Examples of Uses in the Classroom

Delicious